


Consign to Thee and Come to Dust

by the_genderman



Series: Fear No More the Heat of the Sun [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (yet), Alternate Universe - Daemons, Angst, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Hydra (Marvel), Non Consensual Daemon Touching, Period-Typical Homophobia, Psychological Torture, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, standard HYDRA nonsense, this is gonna be kinda rough y'all, very brief - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 15:45:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17025498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_genderman/pseuds/the_genderman
Summary: All lovers young, all lovers mustConsign to thee and come to dust.Part one of a His Dark Materials/MCU fusion. The beginning of the end and the end of the beginning. Bucky falls, breaks, and is put back together as the Winter Soldier.





	Consign to Thee and Come to Dust

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the song “Cymbeline” by Loreena McKennitt, which came originally from Shakespeare (the poem “Fear no more the heat o' the sun” from the play Cymbeline).
> 
>  
> 
> [ Fear no more the heat o’ the sun ](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50428/song-fear-no-more-the-heat-o-the-sun-)
> 
>  
> 
> This fic is about Bucky’s time as the Winter Soldier, so it’s not gonna be pleasant, both physical and psychological abuse. This fic is the hurt, the comfort comes later. There will be a happy ending eventually, but there will be angst and pain beforehand.
> 
> Most of this fic written March of 2018, but I picked it back up and decided to get it into postable shape.

As long as he lived, Steve was sure he would never be able to forget Asa’s anguished howl as the bull terrier daemon slid, leaped, fell out of the train after Bucky, pulled by an unseen hand. Human and daemon weren’t meant to be separated in life or death, so she followed him. He sat on the floor of the bombed out remains of the pub, his Irish wolfhound daemon, Eugenia, curled up in his lap, hiding from everyone else. 

“You know, you’ll have to face them eventually,” Eugenia murmured.

“I know,” Steve replied, running his fingers through her shaggy coat. “I wish I was allowed to grieve him properly, not here, lost in the dark like he was something to be ashamed of. I’m allowed to grieve him as a friend, but nothing more. I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have you.”

Eugenia pressed her head against his stomach, trying to comfort him as best she could, as he tried to comfort her. They had both lost.

\--------------------------------------

Bucky lay in the snow, cold and pain and blood loss clouding his thoughts. Asa lay beside him, licking his hand weakly. She was scared. Her pain was his, and his pain was hers, but still she tried to comfort him.

“I gotchu,” he mumbled, trying to scratch Asa’s chin. “I’m here. I gotchu.”

“I don’t want to go,” Asa whimpered.

“I know,” Bucky answered, trying to turn his head to look at her. His eyes were going unfocused, but he had to see her.

There was a soft crunch of snow in the distance.

\----------

Bucky’s stomach twisted in pain and revulsion, waking him abruptly. He barely managed to turn his head before he vomited. Someone was _touching_ Asa. It was forbidden to touch someone else’s daemon, even in medical emergencies. The doctors’ and nurses’ daemons would do that, not the doctors and nurses themselves. _Everyone_ knew that. Soldiers wouldn’t even touch their enemies’ daemons in the heat of battle. It was _wrong_. He blinked frantically, trying to clear his eyes, to look for Asa. If only he could get up…

\-----------

He was still alive, somehow. He didn’t know where he was, how much time had passed, but he was alive and Asa was lying on his chest, a warm, solid presence. His left arm was gone, a bandaged stump all that remained, but he was alive. He wrapped his right arm around Asa, holding her tight. If he was alive, then he must have misjudged the height of his fall. If he was alive, then Steve would know and would come for him.

\-----------

Another jolt of nausea and pain woke Bucky. He spasmed and rolled off the side of the narrow cot, crashing heavily onto the stone floor, barely missing hitting the man standing at the head of the cot. Ignoring the pain of the impact and trying to force his remaining limbs to work, Bucky twisted, lifting himself to hand and knees. He was in abysmal condition, arm wobbling as he tried to support himself, weak as overcooked pasta. He blinked down at the warped reflection of his face in the impeccably polished boots staring back at him. He lifted his head slowly, craning his neck to look up at the owner of the boots.

The man was HYDRA and he held Asa in his arms, his daemon, a mottled brown python, curled threateningly around her neck, bullying her into silence. Asa squirmed in discomfort, but she was held fast. The HYDRA soldier stood ramrod straight, unmoving. Bucky couldn’t see his face behind his helmet, couldn’t see if he was angry, bored, sadistically pleased, or as uncomfortable as he must have been, holding another man’s daemon. Even through gloves, he ought to be able to feel how wrong his act was.

“What do you want?” Bucky managed to croak out.

The HYDRA soldier said nothing, turning on his heels and marching out of the cell, taking Asa with him.

\----------------------

Even back in Krausberg, nothing had been as cruel as this. HYDRA had outdone themselves somehow. The pain, the forced labor, the experiments, none of that compared to being separated from his daemon. Bucky sat with his back to the wall, knowing that Asa was on the other side and he couldn’t reach her. They could speak to one another, but not see or touch. HYDRA had literally placed a wall between him and his soul. For all the bodily strength he regained day by day, he felt like he was slowly losing his mind. Physically separated from his daemon. Torn between believing that Steve and the Commandos would find him and knowing that, for them not to have come yet, they must believe him dead.

He would have to figure out his own means of escape before he went completely mad. They’d have to take him out of this cell eventually. There was no reason to go to all the trouble of saving him from dying only to leave him to rot in some sunless prison cell. Even unarmed (har, _har_ ), he still knew how to fight. He’d get out or die trying. He didn’t want to die, but he would rather die than allow HYDRA to erase him.

\------------------------

The days and nights blurred together. Bucky was exhausted; true, restful sleep evaded him. He had tried to find a pattern in the light and dark cycle, the random discordant noises. He had tried to find speakers, but couldn’t locate the source of the sound. Between the acoustic torture and being plunged into total darkness, unable even to see his hand in front of his face, then washed in the unflinching, antiseptic brightness of fluorescent bulbs, he couldn’t manage more than quick naps here and there to stave off death by long-term total sleep deprivation. But he supposed that was the whole point. Break him. Leave him so exhausted and pliant that he would do anything, say anything they wanted just to earn a brief respite. Asa was receiving the same treatment, but with different timing still. He could hear the lethargy in her voice as she tried to keep his spirits up. She joked that she was going to break through the wall between them by wearing a groove in the floor running back and forth, but he could hear her desperation.

As Asa ran, Bucky filled his empty hours with what bodyweight exercises he could manage before the fatigue forced him to try to rest again. He wondered if HYDRA was monitoring him aside from the faceless goons who brought his meals at random hours. If they even cared. He thought he was putting on muscle mass even now, with little to do besides eat, attempt to sleep, and keep his body as active as possible to occupy his increasingly distracted mind. If they figured that out, he would probably be in more trouble than he already was. 

He would have to do something soon. 

If _only_ he could think clearly.

\--------------------------

It was during a quiet dark-cycle when they came. He had been trying to rest while he had the chance when the door suddenly swung open and an amorphous mass of HYDRA goons flooded into the cell. Kicking and flailing, he thought he might have managed to do some fairly serious damage to at least one of them as they wrestled him back down onto his cot and jabbed him with a hypodermic needle. He hoped he had.

\-------

If he was having a hallucination, it sure felt real. When he woke (?) again, he was suddenly aware of a new old weight on his left shoulder. Lifting his arms, he stared at his hands. The right one was the same as he thought he remembered it. The left was all shiny silver plates and artificial joints, yet so real-looking and feeling he was sure it was his own. He hadn’t always had it, but he _had_. It acted just like his real arm, right and left hands mirror-images in their movements.

Suddenly a leering face over him, obscured by the lights of the operating room, but he knew who it had to be. The little HYDRA doctor from Krausberg. 

He reached out with his hands, closing fingers around flesh that yielded far too easily. 

Another sharp prick and he faded again.

\--------------------

The blank white electric pain of the chair, his daemon caged where he could see her and she could see him. She could see his suffering and do nothing about it. He could see her fear, panic, frustration, her pain at his pain, and could do nothing, not even speak.

\-----------------

The chair was a brief, intense pain, followed by a blissful blankness. Compared to the cacophony and jagged light-dark of the cell, this was a welcome respite. He was no longer in pain. He was no longer exhausted. The only thing they asked of him was that he listen to them when they spoke, let them fit him with an IV, to feed and hydrate him after his ordeal. If he listened obediently and let the doctors tend to him, then they might be able to stop the noise in his cell, might be able to allow him to rest properly. It sounded too good to be true.

They spoke softly, in gentle nonsense words. He barely felt the needle enter the vein in his flesh hand.

He listened.

When he returned to his cell, the noise had ceased, as they had said. He waited what he thought was a full day, not sleeping, to be sure that they hadn’t lied. The noise did not come back. 

They had kept their promise. 

All he had had to do was listen to them.

\------------------

He knew he had a name once, but he couldn’t remember what it had been. He knew he had a daemon, but he couldn’t remember what form she had taken. Neither he nor she spoke anymore. They were aware of each other’s presence though the wall in the way one felt subtle air currents, but they were little more than solid ghosts. He had a slippery feeling that there were more things he had forgotten than he knew he had once known.

He knew how to accept pain and he knew how to give pain. He knew how to listen to his superiors and to follow their orders. Those things he knew. Few other things mattered.

\------------

The Soldier panted, biting down hard on the mouthguard as the sensory-overloading pain of the chair dissipated. He had heard nothing but the buzz of the electricity and his own racing heartbeat in his ears, the brief but overwhelming pain the only thing in his small world. He hadn’t heard the astonished whispers. He hadn’t seen the stunned faces of the technicians, disbelieving what they had seen. It was impossible. It didn’t happen. He didn’t know what had happened. He didn’t know that anything of importance had happened. It was not his place to know. The pain subsided. He sat in the chair, waiting for his orders. A small, gray bird with a black mask and a hooked beak flew over to take her place on his shoulder.

\------------------------

The years passed, glacial ages broken only by brief thaws. His keepers brought him out of the cold, burned the rime from his brain, whispered soft words into his numbed ears, and woke him from his frozen sleep. They told him what they needed him to do, told him that he was the only one who could do it, told him why he was the only one they could trust to do it. Told him that if he did what they asked of him, perhaps they could stop the pain.

His keepers knew best. He allowed them to fit him with his mask, mirroring the daemon on his shoulder, predators both. He listened as they explained his task. Two known targets, possibly more. They were coming to hurt his keepers, coming to betray them. These were dangerous people, and he was the only one who could stop them from destroying everything his keepers had worked so hard to build.

He understood.

\-------------------------------------

“Bucky?” The word tumbled from Steve’s lips. He stood motionless in the street, the fight draining from his body. Eugenia stood by his side, whining in bewilderment.

This man in front of them, he looked so familiar, smelled so familiar. He wasn’t Bucky but he _was_. Bucky’s daemon had been a bull terrier, solid and protective, full of enthusiasm for life. The shrike perched on this man’s shoulder was small and still and unreadable, eyes dark and beak wickedly hooked. Adults’ daemons were fixed in their forms, everyone knew that, but this was Bucky, this was Asa. Asa had changed, they had both changed, but Steve and Eugenia knew. Somehow, they _knew_.

The shrike cocked her head to the left, her confusion mirrored in Bucky’s eyes. 

“Who the hell is Bucky?”


End file.
